When I was younger, I used to parrot that so-clever mantra among New Yorkers: the only thing better than leaving the city is coming back. And it was true, mostly. Right now, though, Leaving has leapt to No.1 on the charts, and Coming Back is down near the bottom, just ahead of Arguing With Verizon.

We've been back since Saturday, but it's taken this long to park my arse behind a keyboard and write about it because I've been grumpy. Re-entry has been hard. After two weeks of beach towels by day and blankets at night, everything here seems really close. The neighbors, the grocery shelves, the air. Just over 1.6 million of us are crammed onto this oblong rock, and thanks to this bedbug epidemic, we've all claimed a few square feet of territory and crouched down, arms outstretched, screaming BACDAFUCUP! to anyone who comes near us.

This past week has been fun. More fun than a laid-off, divorced, middle-aged, nearsighted, bald man can really hope to expect at this point in life. Even the lancing, which wasn't particularly fun, was sort of fun. (T's toe seems to have fully recovered and is freely co-mingling with the other nine, its days of standoffish purplehood hopefully behind it.)

Much of this fun is due directly to Grandma Jellyspoon, Moxie's mom, who has made her annual pilgrimage to New York to give her grandsons a salutary dose of Minnesota Nice. There was also BlogHer, which this year was nice enough to come to me. Thus began a rare week of almost total autonomy, where I could roll out of bed, traipse through my day, then go hang out with some of my favorite webfriends from all over everywhere.

Next year, BlogHer will move to just about the farthest point from me in the continental United States. And I get that. Things to have to even out. I hope to go, but that, as you might imagine, will be a negotiation.

And speaking of which, some of you might have remembered me talking (and undrunkenly so) about a co-parenting blog that my ex-wife and I were thinking of writing. Apparently I wasn't kidding, because it's here. It's called When the Flames Go Up (or WTFGU, for you Twitcentric compulsive shorteners), and that we were even able to name it together has helped quell a lot of misgivings. I don't yet know what it will be, but I do know Moxie and I want to generate civil, helpful discourse for anyone who's lived through a situation like ours. So if you're looking for Jerry Springer Redux, please move on. And throw a chair at yourself.

I know this might seem like odd timing to launch a blog and then disappear, but now it's time for the boys and me to Yankee Up and vamoose into some New England remoteness. There's not a lot of Internet where we're going, and I don't like the idea of posting using my little handheld keyboard, because it makes me feel like Gulliver in a dollhouse. We'll see how it goes.

So thank you, BlogHerati, for bringing the party home.

Thank you, Grandma Jellyspoon, for coming to town, freeing me up, and saving us a pantload of sitting fees.

And thank you, Moxie, for okaying New Englapalooza II without batting an eye. Moments like that help convince me that WTFGU might actually amount to something.

I'm not sure why we're blessed in this way, but my children have a startling predilection for toe infections. TwoBert is currently convalescing from the latest, which makes somewhere between four and 1,000. We know the drill by heart--lance it, gauze it, and avoid the cherry-flavored oxycillin because it tastes like excreted cough drops--but until yesterday we hadn't had to seek medical attention while living in our remote outpost of a neighborhood.

So begins the epic saga of The Plum That Ate TwoBert.

It began Sunday, after a few hours of pool basketball left all three of us with red necks and abraded toes. Everything seemed fine and asymptomatic on Monday, but yesterday T woke up with a purple toe-blister that left him hobbling like a pirate. My first thought was to take him down to our regular pediatrician, but I frankly wanted to explore our new neighborhood's options. In retrospect, it probably wasn't the wisest idea to do this in 90+ heat with a 40-pound wigglebot on my shoulders.

The first place inspired optimism because it has a separate floor just for kids, very pleasant desk jockeys, and PBS Kids on in the corner. But nooooo, they couldn't treat him because I hadn't made an appointment, and you need to fill out this form to change your GP, and how about the ER 40 blocks away? Then I hovered by a treatment room and looked stricken until an RN agreed to an "off the record" look. She bent down and squinted at this pulsating blob and said, "Wow. That looks really awful." Really? "Wow"? Aren't medical professionals supposed to be jaundiced in the face of trauma? Don't they look at a guy with multiple GSWs and a missing head and then phlegmatically scarf down a spaghetti lunch?

The second place was a private, cash-only clinic, and the head nurse said to us, very Russianly, that "zee doctor izz not pediatreeshan but he vill dake a look." Then I saw the doctor, who might have been a very skilled diagnostician ... during Prohibition. He lumbered and trembled and looked like a much larger and decrepit version of this guy, and we sort of fled.

Finally, I did what I should have done two hours earlier and drove him to our pediatrician, who, like apparently everyone else in the office, is on vacation. When the nurse put us in an exam room, I noticed there were lots of other people waiting in other exam rooms, and they had long, gray beards and cobwebs in their nostrils.

The first hour went pretty quickly, while we read books and played Go Fish and did card tricks and practiced the alphabet and rudimentary touch-typing on the room's PC. After two hours, though, I was pretty much out of tricks, and T, getting antsier by the minute, began making fart noises with his forearm. And I thought: this was genius. We could modify the "squeaky wheel" strategy and be the Farty Wheels who made so many obnoxious noises that they'd move heaven and Earth to get us the hell out of there. He started singing songs about poop and butts and farts that became louder and more visceral once he saw I wasn't going to make him stop. We farted with our squishy cheeks, with our armpits, with zerbits on any exposed, hairless flesh that either of us could find.

I don't know if it worked, but we were out of there with a bandage and a scrip within half an hour.

This would be easy to frame as a lost afternoon of frustration and tedium. But it was also six hours alone with my little boy, who, as my aching shoulders will attest, is getting less little by the second. He starts full-time school in the fall. He's obsessed with his bike. He wants more playdates with his "girlfriends." So as far as I'm concerned, yesterday will always live in my mind as a unique moment in time, when TwoBert and I farted our way to freedom.

As you may remember, so far this has been the Summer of Opposite, as each boy is learning not to like anything that the other finds even slightly interesting.

Also, I have one rule for the summer routine: It must never be routine. I can get behind a little structure, but to me summers are the birthplace of childhood improvisation. Do what you want, make it up as you go. That isn't an option for a lot of kids now, but it is for mine. So each day I ask the boys, "What'll we do today?"

And each day, they shout back diametrically opposite things.

Robert, the Creator, would like nothing better than to hang out in the air conditioning and write his comic books. His latest involves his school being carpet-bombed with balloons full of poop.

TwoBert, the Destructor, wants to voyage forth to playgrounds and parks and pools and find new and fascinating things and run over them with his bike.

The saving grace to all this, believe it or not, is that July's heat is kicking New York's ass as hard as ever. An online weather report says it'll be 92 on Friday. Then you check it a day later and Did we say 92? We meant 108. This, despite protests from daffy Texans who think 92 degrees is reason to pack a fleece, is hot. And the best way to cool oneself is to wet oneself.

Let me rephrase that.

About the only activity my kids can agree on right now involves swimming, so it has become my quest this summer to explore as many wet spots as possible.

Let me re-rephrase that.

In the interest of having the boys 1) coexist peacefully and 2) not combust, we've decided to make it our summer mission to explore as many lakes, beaches, streams, water parks, pools, and busted hydrants as we can. To make my car so damp and sandy that you can raise turtles in it. To make Magellan look like a landlocked punk.

It's a stiff education in how to keep my head on a swivel, since playing zone defense with the boys takes on a much greater urgency when deep water and/or undertow is involved. But they're also much easier to look after when they're strapped apart from each other in the back seat. So really, it's not that bad a trade-off.

About a month ago, Maggie Mason had a conversation with her 20-year-old self that resonated with those of Us who are very intrigued by meeting Previous Us. And, at least in my case, giving Previous Us a good slap.

I'm not going to say I was an idiot when I was 20, but I did drink lots of really cheap, palate-offending beer, and I did succumb to the fashion of wearing boxers that were longer than my shorts. But hey, that was forever ago! Every cell in my body has died and regenerated three times over! And with a couple decades of survival comes wisdom that Collegiate Me could have profited from. Most of Maggie's were universal, but I wanted to indulge my fatherly instincts and add a few of my own, some of which are a little more mancentric:

1. Appreciate your posse.The friendships you're making now will mean a lot to you for the rest of your life. Enjoy your friends now, so you can do lots of dumb stuff together and wistfully misremember it for decades to come.

2. If you like her, let her know. Don't fake indifference, and don't wait three days. Screw pride. At the very least she'll be flattered, and if she reacts poorly, you dodged a bullet. Regardless, it's always better to get shot down than to wonder What If.

3. But don't work too hard. The diligent romantic who "finally wins her over" is less prevalent than you think. Pursuit can be exciting, but if she scampers too far ahead, veer off.

4. Listen more. You like to be heard. When you afford others the same courtesy, you get out of your own head. You might even learn something.

5. Don't judge. Not everyone thinks the way you do, and it's narcissistic to think otherwise. If someone reacts differently than you would, think why.

6. Adapt. You're a planner from way back, and even though a plan can be a great thing, the variables in the formula are just that: variable. Everyone's schedule is unique, and doing something just because "it's the right time" is a terrible idea.

7. Embark. Dumb luck happens. Launch that shot on goal; it might just get past the keeper.

8. Embrace failure. This is a biggie. Every successful person has a string of awful in his/her past. (Before Tom Hanks won his Oscars, he made The 'Burbs.) Troughs hurt, but after you've hit one, you'll find yourself exulting more intensely when you hit a crest.

9. Don't dwell. Mistakes and misfortune will happen. Learn and press on, without beating yourself up.
You're not perfect, and What's Next is always more interesting than What's Been.

10. Be patient. Not everything has to happen RIGHT NOW. You'll have to wait a bit before the Red Sox win the Series, and when they do you'll be young enough to high-five strangers until you can't feel your hands, but old enough to know that we're all just rooting for laundry.

A few days ago, I wrote the origin story for Daddy's Chicken with Rice Bombs, and a couple of you have inquired about the recipe. This is entirely charming and naïve of you, since I'm worthless when it comes to codifying specific amounts of ingredients. I tend to adhere to the less-formal school of Eyeballing. Besides, cooking for your kids is a very subjective business, depending on what the darling little punks will deign to eat. So every recipe can be boiled down to the two basic instructions of 1) don't undercook it, and 2) season to taste.

The process has evolved since its inception, but here are the current steps that I mostly follow each time it's Bomb Night. Proceed and personalize at your own risk:

Get some boneless chicken, but don't get dark meat because Robert hates dark meat. This is inexplicable to me, as thigh meat is succulent and delicious, while breast meat is dry and as flavorful as particle-board. Perhaps Robert's taste buds were irrevocably shifted that one time when he was two and fell off the bed.

Cut the chicken into bite-size pieces, or strips, or scalene triangles, or whatever-the-hell.

Marinate the chicken in a mixture of thyme, parsley, garlic powder, soy sauce, and a shot of that miso soup base that you get in that Asian convenience store every time you're back in the old neighborhood. Squish to combine, cover, and stash in the fridge.

Announce it's time for a "marinade check!" Enjoy how TwoBert likes to smell the bowl and pretend to faint dead away with joy, like they do in the cartoons.

Combine a cup of rice with two cups of water, and make sure TwoBert scoops it because TwoBert is a good cook and wants to help and DADDY YOU SAID I COULD HELP!

Start the rice on a low simmer, set the timer for 20 minutes, and make sure TwoBert is within audible distance when it goes off. Because TwoBert is in charge of turning off the timer, and if he doesn't hear it and you turn it off because you'd rather cook without persistent, piercing beeeeps rattling your molars, TwoBert will find out and fire up is Umbrage Meter to 1,000 and DADDY YOU SAID I WAS IN CHARGE OF IT!

Allow Robert to cut the broccoli into individual florets, or scalene triangles, or whatever-the-hell. Intervene when he starts beheading stalks with dramatic swipes and yelling "YAAH!"

When there's about five minutes left on the rice timer, dump the lightly salted broccoli into a heated, non-oiled frypan. Flip it about a dozen times like they do on TV because it looks cool. Sauté for about three minutes, or between the time when it's tender and it's charcoal.

Spread the broccoli to the perimeter of the pan and dump the chicken mixture in the center. Brace for the stampede of little legs who want to help flip the individual pieces so they all get an external sear. Tell TwoBert to get that chair to stand on so he can see what he's doing.

No, not the chair with the fraying hole in the seat. The one you're less likely to fall through.

I know you like that chair, and that you already put in all that effort to get it here. But really, it's unsafe.

Hey, have you ever pulled your groin muscle? Because that will totally put you on the DL for 6-8 weeks, and you'll walk around like you have sand up your butt.

Yes, I know that sounds hilarious, but trust me. It completely isn't.

OK, now you're just laughing to tick me off. I will SO school you when you learn how to read.

Resolve to get one of those cheap stepstool things the next time you hit IKEA.

When the chicken pieces are all cooked on the outside, get the big metal mixing bowl and place it upside down over the frypan. You did this that one time when you were experimenting and the chicken came out really tender (even that awful, tasteless breast meat).

Let sit for about a minute, then stick a knife under the rim and fling the bowl off the frypan with a flourish because metal conducts heat exceedingly well.

When the rice timer goes off, DO NOT TOUCH IT BECAUSE I AM IN CHARRRGE OF IT!

Throw a little butter and salt in with the rice. Let it sit until the butter melts. Stir to combine, then form the Rice Bombs with the shot glass and place in the center of the plates. Resist the instinct to pour some of the cooking liquid over the bombs because that is Gross and Completely Unacceptable.

Plate the chicken and broccoli around the plate's perimeter, and not on top of the rice because the bombs must remain utterly pristine and virginal until the boys drown them in soy sauce.

Serve with ice-cold-water-from-the-fridge and a dry riesling. Refill your glass as necessary.

Let them lick their plates. Resolve to assume this is their tacit way of thanking you.

So it seems I didn't post to LOD this weekend. I think everyone in the world is OK with this, because frankly, after 24 straight days of bloviation, I was sort of sick of myself. It was time to put down the bellows in this wordsmithery and do something radical. Like socialize.

For you see, like the great Colossus of Rhodes, which mythically stood akimbo while Aegean merchants gazed up at its junk, I am a single parent with a foot in two very disparate worlds. Half the time, I'm a parent navigating a bedtime routine; the other half, I'm walking the streets of Manhattan, legally acquitted from any sort of childrearing whatsoever. It's a defensible lifestyle, given the dual opportunity it offers, but decompressing from one to the other is a tricky business. You need to learn to pace yourself during transition, or you can get the social bends.

Friday was a typical example of this. I spent the day with TwoBert before I corralled Robert from school and saw Toy Story 3 as part of a birthday party. Moxie and I swapped the boys at the afterparty, and before I knew it I was at a table of childless people trying to keep up with their ridiculously unburdened lifestyles. I spent about half an hour with my face in my dumplings before I could construct a lucid thought that didn't involve This Darling Thing My Kid Did.

It's been a kid's age since my weekends could turn on a dime, and it's still cool to pretend I can still flit from flower to flower without a moment's thought. But when my kids came along, my DNA sort of changed over. I became a planner. A shepherd. A dad, whose mind is seldom far from what his kids might be reading, or building, or poking with sticks.

I'm getting better at my single man's repartee, and if I'm out long enough, I can reinhabit the Ghost of LOD Past and remember when I had only me to care about. Every so often, though, when I cross the street, I catch myself instinctively reaching back for TwoBert's hand.

While serving as TwoBert's wingman on a playdate the other day, I found myself involved in a discussion about blogging. One mom started off saying she didn't read blogs. (I mean, really! Who has the time?) And if she did, she sure wouldn't bother with a blog about raising kids. (I mean, I'm already living that life, yknow? Why rehash it?) And if she did read blogs about raising kids, she sure as hell wouldn't want to read a daddy blog. (I mean, what am I supposed to read about? Seeing their kid a half hour per day and griping about changing diapers?)

As usual, I was conflicted. Naturally, I was disappointed that this is this woman's experience, one that is shared by too many other parents with absentee partners. However, I also wanted to wave my sunscreen- and popsicle-stained palms at her and say, "Dude. I'm right here. And there are tons of other fathers out here, whose hands I would gladly shake were I a little less sticky. How's about taking a stroll outside the gated community of Head-Up-Your-Ass Estates? Hm?"

I know daddy bloggers aren't the usual case. Not by a long shot. We are a stark minority among parent bloggers, so much so that we are often just lumped in with the mommies. Not every dad has the option to care for his kids as much as we do, or gives much of a shit about washing clothes, checking homework, packing lunches, and the usual crudgery that punctuates parenthood as we might. Fewer still are the men who will make the time to write about it, with vowels and everything.

Nevertheless, it gives me a hot pain in the nethers to spend a few days singledadding my boys, taking care to listen to this and scrub that and pry apart the other things, and feel pretty happy about it, and then walk into a Buy Buy Baby and see this on a onesie:

Like good little New Yorkers, the boys developed a taste for takeout Chinese early in life. And when we moved to this neighborhood, despite the dearth of choices, we found a place that made a delicious version of their favorite dish, chicken with broccoli. However, it took over an hour for the food to get here, and it was often wrong, and when was wrong it took forever to convince them to bring the right food. Which took another hour to arrive.

Then one time, they asked us to return the wrong entree.

Let me re-write that. They wanted the food. Back. At best, it seemed like a questionable business practice. At worst, it was a supremely nasty idea to contemplate. They've been dead to us ever since.

Using my signature fatherly pluck, however, I resolved to recreate this dish at a fraction of the cost and waiting time. As is so often the case, invention was the daughter of "Fuck You."

It didn't take long to perfect the Daddy Supreme, which comprises marinated chicken breast sautéd with broccoli and served with--and NOT over--white rice. This soon became a crucial dish in my repertoire, not least because it's one of the few that both kids will eat in its entirety. But there remained one problem: the dreaded rice portion.

As TwoBert matures, he is developing into a very competitive second child who will scratch and claw in order to Get His. And whenever I used to dish out the rice, he would study me with the gimlet gaze of a line judge to make sure he got as much rice as his big brother did. Robert's technique was a little subtler, as he would wait until the plates hit the table before decrying the very thought that a cantankerous pipsqueak like TwoBert could receive more rice than he. The back-and-forth would go forth and back until my skull split open and my brains spilled onto the table.

And then, one day, I got smart.

I was plating the Supreme one night when I happened to see my two-jigger shot glass sitting in the dish tray. I molded the rice into silos of fun and placed the chic-and-broc around the perimeter, creating portions that were both 1) identical in size and 2) vaguely weapon-y looking.

And thus, Daddy's Chicken with Rice Bombs was born.

It's been a weekly staple ever since, and it's given me the courage to attempt my latest brainstorm: sculpting light sabers out of chocolate ice cream.

Since my last day of work, I haven't set foot on the subway. I've spent the last week or so ferrying the kids to and from school by car, starkly renouncing one of my long-held beliefs that car-based lifestyles are for schmucks. Especially in the city, with its alternate-side parking, and Byzantine rules of parking, and the complete lack of any parking anywhere.

Despite all this, I have to say that above-ground transport has a decided advantage when it comes to boy transport, because we cannot go anywhere on the subway without some sort of skirmish, or slapfight, or I WANT TO SIT ON THIS SIDE OF DADDY AARRRGH. In the car, I can strap them into their corners (and, in extreme cases, empty the trunk into a big pile between them) until TwoBert passes out from his extreme carcolepsy.

One thing I must constantly keep in check as I drive is my unfailing intolerance for flouters, and oblivioids, and most anyone else in general. This is difficult in my neighborhood, which is full of gypsy cab drivers who think nothing of cutting off six people in order to park diagonally on the sidewalk. Come to think of it, they pretty much think nothing, period. I like to think I've gotten used to it, but I often have to remind myself to chill out, especially when I've got kids in the back.

This afternoon TwoBert and I were headed downtown to pick up Robert from school. And as I was approaching an intersection, at which I had the green, this guy just started crossing the street, right to left, without looking anywhere. He didn't look addled or homeless; his clothes were clean, and he had on new sneakers. I kept thinking, he's gonna stop, right? He sees the Big Red Hand, doesn't he? No he didn't apparently, because he just walked right into the intersection against the green, hands in pockets, face forward. Begging to be hit like seven-pin.

I braked hard to avoid picking up the spare, and all he did was look mildly to his left. Like having a car bearing down on you at 30 mph was the order of the day. And as he crossed toward the driver's side, I sort of left my body, and forces outside my control took over. I rolled the window down and somehow simultaneously processed that I had to say something to this freak while at the same time preserving TwoBert's tender ears.

So I yelled, "You ... jaycock!"

I don't know where that came from. Perhaps it organically conflated itself from jaywalking and somethingsucker, but that's what came out. The Jaycock himself looked back a little quizzically, but he shrugged and loped off. TwoBert, however, was intrigued.

"Daddy, what's jaycock?"

"I don't know. It's a word I made up."

"Why did you say it?"

"I just sort of felt like it, I guess."

Two minutes later, as I was turning onto the highway, TwoBert said, "Fezzypoop!"